


Like a fist to an open palm

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Egypt NT, Gen, Liverpool F.C.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: A journey made up of beginnings.





	Like a fist to an open palm

**Author's Note:**

> WELLLL I took a lot of liberties after doing a medium amount of research. Everyone I named is probably real but their personalities are all made up because my arabic has stalled at third grade level (sorry mom). Ustaz is "Mr" in Arabic. Mohamed played for El Mokawloon until 2012, when the rest of the season was cancelled after the Port Said Stadium disaster. This is the longest gen fic I've ever written, and my feelings are complicated. 
> 
> To Discorgi, because you made me do it. But also, *mumbles* I love you guys.

**Basyoun, 2001**

  
  


The boy stands in front of the goalkeeper, ball clutched under his arm. He sets it down, carefully, on the penalty spot. The referee yells at him to go; they’d lost the only whistle that worked during halftime. The boy stands, hands on hips, patiently ignoring the referee, the stands with a smattering of devoted parents under the glaring sun, and his own teammates fidgeting in a line behind him. The game was almost at its end. He really needed a drink of water.  
  


The boy licks his lips. Takes two steps to the side, building momentum, then runs at the ball. He hits it- it flies, true as an arrow, to the back of the net. The goalkeeper sprawls in the dust, looking like he was about to cry.  
  


The sun spins overhead. The heat shimmers over the pitch, but the boy had left running.

  
  


_Ustaz Masoud! Ustaz Masoud!_

  
  


Mohamed runs, laughing, into the arms of his P.E. teacher, followed by his teammates, yelling in a riot of green and yellow. They’d won the cup. He was nine years old.

  
  
  
  
  


**Basyoun, 2006**

  
  


The first classes in the morning vary. There’s fifty minutes of Math and then fifty minutes of Arabic three days of the week, then P.E. and Religion for two days of the week. This meant he had ten minutes to leg it from the school to the bus stop down the road, but he never left early. He’d promised his mother, he’s promised his father, and he’d glared at Nasr when he made fun of him for being a good little boy.  
  


He wasn’t, Mohamed thinks guiltily, tapping his pencil on his bouncing leg. If he was truly good, he’d be paying attention to the blackboard instead of going over free kick routines in his head. Ustaz Hanna had a notoriously low opinion on football as compared to the central tenets of Islam, and therefore doled out his low opinion on Mohamed by extension.  
  


“Mohamed! Answer this question.”  
  


His head flicks up guiltily. For some reason all he had in his copy book was a badly drawn picture of Totti going for goal. Ahmed leaned over and snickered when he saw, elbowing Mohamed in the ribs. He points at his own book.

Mohamed reads it out loud gratefully. Ustaz Hanna’s glare doesn’t diminish, but the bell goes, shrilly. He almost sighs in relief.

  
  


“Thanks,” he says at Ahmed, scooping his pencil and books into the bag and zipping it shut. He missed Ahmed’s eye roll, but he knew it was happening. He grins at Ahmed, swings his bag onto his shoulder, and runs out.

  
  


He only stops to flash a crumpled signed letter from the club to the security guard, before he’s down the road, heels kicking up yellow dust behind him. It’s 9am, the sun is bright, and he is on his way.

  
  
  
  


**Cairo, 2010**

  
  


The first team debut was just that- a debut. He ran around for a bit, too excited to be actually useful, and forgot to track back until he glimpsed the thunderous face of the coach on the sideline, gesturing furiously at the home goal. The game ended 1-1, and he touched the ball maybe twice.

  
  


Still, it was the best day of his life. Because it wasn’t like a dream had come true, but like a million doors had been opened, all at once, the future glimmering with possibility.

  
  
  


**Cairo, 2012**

  
  


His first instinct was to call his brother. Nasr picks up on the first ring, and Mohamed didn’t know what to say or even why he called so they both stay on the line, just breathing. On television a reporter was shouting in front of a frenzied crowd. He sees police at the entrance to the stadium. He sees paramedics, smoke from flares. He sees blood on the street.

After a long time, as they watched the players being airlifted out by the Army, Nasr says, “It will be okay.”

  
  


He starts saying a prayer, voice wavering in the beginning but gaining momentum, rising to match the melody in the words. Mohamed listens, heart closing like a fist in his chest, feeling so suffocated he couldn’t breathe.

The reporter was wailing, now, as everything continued to unfold, scene after brutal scene. “An apocalypse,” he says. “This is an atrocity. The biggest disaster in our footballing history.”

It did feel like an apocalypse. Like an ending, bitter as sand in his mouth.

  
  
  


**Basyoun, 2012**

  
  


“What does this mean,” Mohamed says. Ramy stared at him like he wasn’t sure if Mohamed was cognitively challenged, or if he was just taking the piss by acting dense. Mohamed coughs.

  
  


“I just.. Want to be sure. Before I go I mean,” Mohamed says, staring at his boots. Ramy sighs, throws himself on the bench in front of Mohamed, and leans forward.

“I don’t know for sure.”

 

Mohamed opens his mouth, about to protest, but Ramy makes a shushing gesture. Mohamed shuts his mouth.  
  


“I don’t know _for sure_ ,” Ramy repeats, eyes staring daggers at Mohamed as though daring him to interrupt. “But I know they’ve been looking at you, playing with El Mokawloon, for a while. You’re nineteen, the Egyption league is looking almost as good as over now, and this is Basel.”

Mohamed opens his mouth again, trying to ask _What does that mean?_ But he catches himself before Ramy could.  
  


Ramy gives him a look of approval. He pauses a beat for effect, then says, “It means Europe. It means playing time, if they want you. It means Champions League.”

  
  


The sentence hangs between them. Mohamed leans back against the wall. He stares at the changing room, the ancient massage tables, the abandoned cleats on the player’s shelves. It’s been almost two months. He still wakes up, sometimes, in the middle of the night, heartbeat racing as though from a chase. It wasn’t like he’d thought he would remain in Egypt forever. He had always wanted more. To shine brighter. To grow, expand, climb the ladder till he reached the top.

  
  


He thinks about endings. He thinks about the open doors, the possibilities sitting there, just waiting for him. He thinks about Switzerland.

  
  


“Oh,” he says.

Ramy rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry. I told them you were definitely playing the friendly. I also told them your fee is high, but there’s no way they won’t want you after that match. All you have to do,” he leans in, as though to drive home the message, “Is show them.”

“Alright,” Mohamed says. That was never a problem before, and he couldn’t see it becoming a problem now. That, at least, was crystal clear, always and forever.

  
  
  
  
  


**Basel, 2012**

  
  


He scores twice. He couldn’t even feel most of his face from the cold but it didn’t stop him from running. Nothing could, not that night.

  
  


Later Ramy calls, heavy bass music in the background.

“Congratulations, baby,” he yells. Mohamed’s grinning, despite himself. “You’re a Basel player now. But not _now_ now, I know there’s the Olympics-”

  
“Thanks,” Mohamed says. He mouths the word Basel silently, trying it out.  
  


“Word of advice,” Ramy continues, “Don’t grow out your hair. They’ll want to touch it. Europe is weird, Mohamed. Reallllllly-”  
  


“Okay, Ramy. You have fun now.”  
  


“Okay, _Mohamed_. You’re the best.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**London, 2012**

  
  


Summer had happened like a dream. The Olympics in England should’ve been hectic but it passed Mohamed by like a wave, hazy and triumphant at first but coming to an end in the quarter finals with a cold slap of reality. He had scored three times however, and although Egypt’s dream was over for the moment, his dream was growing so big he felt like grinning every morning. Essam, who he shared a room with, was thoroughly sick of his good mood by the end of the tournament.

 

“Sometimes,” Mohamed confides, staring at the ceiling of his hotel room with his arms behind his head, “I’m almost certain I’ll score when I get on the pitch.”  
  


Essam throws a towel at him. Mohamed yells, and Essam’s laughing at him, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.

  
“You’re twenty years old, Mohamed,” Essam says. “That’s what all twenty year olds feel like.”  
  


“Not you,” Mohamed says.  
  


“Well, not me, because I’m a goalkeeper. At twenty I was pissing myself at the thought of goals being scored.”  
  


Mohamed rolls his eyes, holding up a hand to imitate meaningless chatter.  
  


“Anyway,” he says, propping himself up on one elbow, “Surely this means I will be good for Basel. Think about it- scoring in the Champions league.”  
  


Essam rolls his eyes. “I can’t relate.”  
  


“Fine,” Mohamed says, lying back down, “Be like that. It’ll be amazing. I know it.”

Essam’s eyes soften, with Mohamed lying there, dreaming at the ceiling with his eyes wide open.  

  
  


“Yes,” Essam says, “I’m sure.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Basel, 2013**

  
  


He’d never known that an hour could feel so long. But it did, in Basel. The hours after training stretched long and empty while he had absolutely nothing to fill them with. Not speaking the language, Mohamed thought, was proving way harder than he had optimistically imagined. He ordered room service for two weeks straight until he’d gotten thoroughly sick of everything on the limited swiss menu, then reluctantly left to find food somewhere in the city. He wandered the streets for hours, coming back to a dim lit hotel room at night.

  
  


He missed Egypt. It was a ridiculous thought, so Mohamed tried to dispel it. He was living the dream he’d always dreamed. He couldn’t possibly miss home.

  
  


“That’s stupid,” Nasr says bluntly when they skyped. “Of course you miss home. You’re all alone there. What are you even eating? Is there anywhere you can go for good food?”

“Cheese,” Mohamed says, deadpan. “I’m eating cheese. I’m starving and they’re paying me just enough to eat a whole wheel every week.”

Nasr makes a distressed sound, so Mohamed lets up. “I’m joking. I eat okay. We eat at the training center a lot, and then I just get a kebab or something for dinner.”

This gives Nasr the opportunity he wanted to blast imitation arab food, and Mohamed laughs, just pleased he could speak Arabic out loud. He’d missed it, and admitting that made it easier to admit that he’d missed home, missed his family. Missed the sun, too.

“Mohamed?” Nasr says.

“Yeah,” Mohamed says. He steels himself, closing his eyes. He couldn’t fall now, not when he was so close to the start of something. Not when he had come so far. And thinking that, made it clear what he had to do. “I’m here. I’m thinking of having English lessons.”

  
  
  
  
  


 

 

**London, 2014**

  
  


Ramy had told him, almost cackling, that scoring against Chelsea was a surefire way to make them want him. This was how he came to know that he was officially a Chelsea player, in fact the first Egyptian player ever to have signed for Chelsea.

  
  


This almost felt like a curse, one long languishing year on the bench later.

  
  


“Ramy,” Mohamed says, trying to keep his temper. “This is not working.”

“It’s only been a year,” Ramy placates. This was new for both of them; Mohamed wasn’t in the habit of making demands, and he trusted Ramy far too much to do so. “If you sit for enough time, build some trust, Mourinho will see-”  
  


“I can’t.”  
  


“Why not?”  
  


“I have to play.”  
  


“You’re not a spoiled kid, Mohamed.” A beat. Ramy sighs. “I’m sorry, that’s not fair.”  
  


“I know.”  
  


“Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”  
  


That turned out to be Italy. Fiorentina, in fact, on a loan. Ignoble start to a premier league career aside, Mohamed almost feels like he’s making the wrong decision a week before he’s schedule to go. It feels unfinished. It wasn’t what he dreamed of, all those years ago, leaving the english league with nothing to show but a paltry two goals. Foolish, he knows, to base his career on what he thought as a child, but that’s what he’s always done. Somehow it seemed like he was keeping the promise to that fourteen year old, on the long bus rides back and forth from Cairo, the dusk settling over the dunes and his mind far away, arm juddering on the window of the bus. All of a sudden he felt unsure. He felt like a twenty three year old who didn’t have a skill to his name except his ability to kick a ball, moving to a foreign country where he didn’t know the language, again.

  
  


“Ramy,” he says after the call’s picked up, but he doesn’t get to finish.  
  
“Don’t,” Ramy says. “You’re doing the right thing. You’re twenty-three, you have to play."

Mohamed doesn’t say anything.

“So go to Italy,” Ramy says. “And play.”

  
  
  


**Florence, 2015**

  
  


Surprisingly enough, he loved Italy. It was, he thinks, something to do with the language, their animated faces and hand gestures. It reminded him of home. And surprisingly enough, one day Ramy calls and says, “Hey, did you say Totti was your hero?”

Mohamed’s attempting to make his own dinner, hands wet and phone tucked between his shoulder and ear. “Well, not just Totti, I mean Zidane- Wait, why are you asking?”

“Would you like,” Ramy says, drawing out the suspense gleefully, “To go to Rome.”

He almost drops the phone. “What? What for?”  
  


“More money, first of all, and Fiorentina is not a place that deserves you, the way you’re playing. Spalletti asked for you, specifically.”

 

Mohamed thinks about it, although the decision was already made. To go to Roma. To play in the Stadio Olympico,to wear the formidable yellow and red. To be closer to becoming, something he had not yet even dared to name to himself, something magic.

  
  


“Yes,” he says finally. “I think I’m ready.”

  
  


 

 

**Rome, 2015**

  
  


It takes him a month to score his first goal at Roma. This wasn’t long, by any chance, but it rankled anyway. The first time he went on the pitch it felt like his debut all over again, shaky legs and heart on fire away at Verona. Afterwards, Spalletti gave everyone a supportive noncommittal speech in the locker room about not conceding stupid goals while playing away. Before he left the locker room he fixed his eyes on Mohamed and said, “And you. Track back more.”

  
  


So that was that.

  
  
  


“Have you talked to Totti yet,” Nasr says, not even bothering to hide the awe in his voice.

“Yes,” Mohamed says, “I asked him where the vending machines where in the training center.”

“What did he say?”

“On the second floor in a nook behind the elevator.”

“That’s it?”

“What do you expect? He doesn’t glow with wisdom and benevolence! He’s just-” Mohamed struggled here, because truth be told, he couldn’t yet describe Totti. “He’s just a player, like everyone else.” That much at least is true.  
  


In fact playing with someone he’d idolized as a child, still big eyed and clutching the FIFA controllers in his hand, the players moving in all their pixelated glory on screen, was not that much different than playing with anyone else. Totti was inexplicably normal, though he was surrounded by an aura of respect at all times within the team. He made terrible jokes that weren’t funny during dinners, and glowered like a thundercloud when Roma hit rough patches.

Spalletti would sigh and Totti would huff and next match Totti would be subbed on the pitch, and he’d score, too, celebrating not smugly but with such relief that everyone around simply felt humbled. Mohamed reported all this dutifully to his eager friends back home.

 

Truth be told, he doesn’t feel the magic he’d expected till Torino. It was too warm, he remembers. His hair felt saturated with the heavy warmth on the pitch, and sweat was getting into his eyes. Mohamed looks around at his teammates, and there was no spark of anything they needed for an extra goal to equalize. They were dead in the water.  
  


Then Totti comes on in the 86th minute, and Mohamed thinks, surely now- and like a prayer answered, like a wheel turning inescapably, like a cloud lifting and the sun coming out- Totti scores. And Totti scores again. Mohamed watches him get buried under his teammates and feels- envious.

He shakes his head and it’s gone again. There was something bigger in the stadium. It was here; it was him. Francesco Totti, and Mohamed thinks, yes. _That is what I want to become_. There was the plain truth, something he’d known ever since he first started playing football but here, inexplicably, reaffirmed.

 

_That is how I want to play_.

  
  
  


 

 

**Rome, 2017**

  
  


Ramy says, “So I know you’ve always wanted to go back to England.”  
  


At least this time it wasn’t out of the blue. He’d already said as much, to Ramy, not actually expecting it to happen this soon. Two years in Rome, and he felt- restless.

“Well,” Ramy continues. “It’s Liverpool.”

_Liverpool?_ He remembers the stadium. They played in red, they sing a song before kick off, and  they’d wanted him briefly before Chelsea but it’d gone sideways due to some reason or another.

“Are they serious this time?”

“Serious as can be.” Ramy lowers his voice. “Think 50 million serious.”

“Oh,” Mohamed says. “Why not.”

  
  
  
  


**Liverpool, 2017**

  
  


His first impression of Liverpool was that- it was gloomy. The skies were overcast, even more so than London, and everything was in shades of brick red or grey. He skypes Nasr just to complain about it, in the car being shuttled from place to place, training ground to stadium and back to training ground again for more photos and a meet and greet.

“Are you regretting it already?” Nasr mocks.

“No,” Mohamed says. “I’m just complaining.” He grins.

Liverpool the city might’ve seemed grubby and somewhat foreboding, in an industrial sort of way, but his ties with Liverpool football club shielded him from the city at large. That is- he spent most of his time in Melwood. And then the rest of the time at Anfield, and what time left he spent at home, trying to get Arabic TV installed.

 

He had a face distinctive enough for people in the city to spot instantly. This had happened in Rome too, but Liverpool felt different. The recognition in Rome had come with his improving performance- Liverpool just had a buzz of inquisitiveness that he wasn’t sure he liked. After all, the only record he’d broken for the club so far was most expensive transfer. So he stayed at home and drove Nasr out of his mind with constant calls.  
  


After he scores in the debut, Mohamed breathes easier. It still wasn’t easy to be out and about in the city without being stopped every two paces, but he feels, in a way, that he had passed some initial test.

  
  
  


**Basyoun, 2017**

  
  


He goes home before the match against Congo. It wasn’t like he had to pull any special favors, Basyoun was two hours drive from Alexandria, and he was utterly spent and somewhat restless after the ruthless training Cuper was making them go through.  
  


Ahmed was sitting on his parents’ doorstep when Mohamed got back. He was wearing shades, and looked very old and rather distinguished. They hadn’t seen each other for more than two years- Mohamed feels a flash of something warm in his chest. Here was the back garden he’d played in with Nasr, kicking around an old beat up football. Here was the swing set, the playground, the dusty patch of open ground with two tattered goalposts on either end.

He drinks a coke with Ahmed and tries to catch up. Coke was kind of a luxury, at this point. Everything he ate was. But the match was only two days away- the match that would decide if Egypt qualified for the World Cup.

Ahmed was now a pharmacist, and his daughter was 4 years old, and he watched every single one of Mohamed’s matches in Liverpool with all his other friends, crowded into the same restaurant every week.

“Can you imagine,” Ahmed says, “Ustaz Hanna says he’s always known you’d be a star. He’s telling everyone God blessed you personally, and it’s all up to him because he taught you religion studies in 8th grade.”

 

“Well,” Mohamed says, grinning a little. He sips the warm, fizzy coke. “God has blessed me.”

He catches Ahmed’s eye and starts laughing. “But probably not because of Hanna.”

“But seriously,” Ahmed says, frowning thoughtfully. “I thought you’d be in Alexandria. Partying before the big game. Why’d you come back?”

Mohamed looks around, at a loss for words.

“I’m not sure,” he says. He just needed to see the same familiar roads again. See his friends, his family. Make sure that certain things could stay the same, no matter how far he decides to go. The people treated him with more reverence now, it seemed, more universal encouragement. But here he was still Mohamed, who’d grown up playing on the old gravel pitch and won two cups for the elementary school.

 

“If I can’t come back here,” Mohamed says, “Then what’s the point?”

“You’re right,” Ahmed says. “You belong with Egypt.”

Mohamed laughs, bright and loud. “Well, let’s see after the match.”

  
  


  
  


**Alexandria, 2017**

  
  


When the ball goes in past Essam’s outstretched fingers, Mohamed drops to the ground. It was the 86th minute. He couldn’t help but collapse, all the hope keeping his limbs in place destroyed in an instant. It felt like an age with his face in the pitch- like a cold, lonely decade of being misplaced and ostracized was rendered meaningless. He tastes blood in his mouth, the stadium roar sounding far away and insignificant.

  
  


He doesn’t know where he found the will to stand up again. The 86th minute. Just the embers of hope left in his chest, as he pushes himself to his feet, to stand up, again. To raise his arms in hope, again. Somewhere, he thinks, someone is watching this. A boy, maybe. A boy with dreams.

  
  


So he stands up. And the whistles blows. And he runs.

  
  
  


An age later, when they get the penalty three minutes into extra time, everyone celebrates as though they’ve already won. The ball sat there for a moment, so cherished for the whole match, neglected on the grass as Congo attempted to talk the referee out of his decision and Egypt celebrated. Mohamed picks it up. It was just a ball, scuffed and marked with a thousand kicks and bootprints. He leans his forehead against for a moment, then he puts it down on the penalty spot. He backs up to the line.

  
  


This time, when the whistle goes, he doesn’t hesitate. He simply runs, at an angle, at the ball, sitting waiting for him on the green pitch, as though this was his destiny all along, all his pasts and futures colliding and coalescing to bring him here to this moment.  

  
  


And he hits it perfectly into the back of the net.

  
  
  
  


The crowd is screaming his name.  

  
  
  
  


**Liverpool, 2018**

  
  


Europe had always been more of a means to an end, more of a place for glory rather than emotion. Mohamed didn’t expect this to change, but change it did. Nasr jokes that perhaps Mohamed should become an Imam what with the way Liverpudlians were flocking to Islam at his antics on the pitch.

  
  


It’s only sort of a joke. Mohamed knows it’s important, the way he falls to his knees on the pitch and thanks God before everyone, important in more ways than one. He’d let his hair grow out anyway despite the occasional fondling by a stranger. He thinks it suits him.

  
  


And Liverpool, too, had become something familiar. It was the history that moved Mohamed. Hillsborough, the number 96 on the back of every jersey and the eternal flames. It reminded him of how he carried the 74 on his own jersey in Florence. And the twenty eight years they’ve gone without a premier league trophy. It seemed like something worth reaching for. Something that both he and the team could grow towards. And so when he steps onto the pitch in Anfield, and waits for the whistle, it feels like the whole world had opened up a little, with enough understanding to get by.

  
  


When he scores a goal, he is thinking of the songs on the Kop.

  
And when he opens his arms to them, saying _h_ _ere I am, here is the joy I give you_ , _here,_ they are singing his name.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> "When all the shock of white  
> and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave  
> the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,  
> the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin  
> growing over whatever winter did to us, a return  
> to the strange idea of continuous living despite  
> the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,  
> I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf  
> unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all."  
> Ada Limón, _Instructions on Not Giving Up_
> 
>  
> 
> I dont even know why this came so easily through the course of one (1) day except, maybe, I had to write it. That's the only excuse I have. 
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading <333


End file.
